Durban and the Wild coast
I spent a couple nights in Durban, partly because something I ate the other day didn’t agree with me and I didn’t feel too great my first day there. 2nd day, much better. I was actually able to walk around the city! Hadn’t done this anywhere in South Africa yet! I walked all the way from the upperclass suburb I was staying in, to the city centre, the harbour front and checked out the Indian section of town. There’s a huge Indian population here, and plenty of market stalls and shops to show for it. It was busy, but didn’t seem dangerous apart from their being pickpockets around, hardly the first place I’ve been with pickpockets. I didn’t take many pictures, none in the market area, following advice about not being pickpocketed here.
What’s amazing to me is how you can walk through one area and see 75% white people, then walk into the city centre and not see a single one. The problem for me is, the upper/middle class white areas aren’t really interesting, just shopping malls, typical western food restaurants and peoples houses. All the hostels seem to be in these sorts of areas, to reassure people about the safety. At least here in Durban the hostel staff gave me the options of: city bus, taxi or walking into the city centre. Much preferable to Pretoria where it was, “stay on one road if you walk to the mall and taxi if you want to go anywhere else”.
I left Durban and spent about 10 hours on the bus to get to Cintsa, a small beach town on the wild coast home of supposedly the best hostel in South Africa. I had to see what that was all about. I arrived just after sunset but there was still just enough light to see the perfect view of the awesome little cove I had from my window.
Maybe it’s a good backpackers in the summer when it’s busy, but not this time of year. I spent my first day just chilling around the beaches, when I was finished with that, early afternoon, there wasn’t much else to do! The internet wasn’t working and there was hardly anyone else around that I saw. In the evening a few more people arrived on the bus, like me the day before, and after eating dinner in the bar we were playing cards when just before 10pm they called last drinks at the bar. 10pm, at a hostel, last drinks. At that moment the title of best backpackers in South Africa became a laughing matter to all of us there.
The next day, which happened to be my 22nd birthday, was decidedly uninteresting. All of the (few) events put on by the hostel were cancelled because it was too windy, I was going to go surfing. Instead all of us sat and watched the french open until the bus came to take us somewhere more happening, sort of. Got the bus to Port Elizabeth, for the only reason that it is a compulsory overnight stop on the bus route, the next morning I continued on to Jefferys Bay to do something a little bit more interesting for my birthday..
Tags: South Africa, Travel
Adam
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